• Domain Registration
• Web Design
• Web Hosting

Domain Registration – Picking a domain name is a very important process in building your online presence. At BizOHost, we offer a wide range of  TLD’s (.com, .net, .org). Using our domain checker, you may search for available names and once you’ve found that great domain. We can have you up and running in minutes. Domain registrations are valid for one year minimum.

Web Design – Now that you have the name your market will remember. It’s time to begin on the design. The first impression is an important one. Many times we’ll come across a could be great company, with a terrible design. Or maybe the company has an ok design, but the page loads very slowly. All of these things can drive visitors away before they even get to your content. We will work with you to make sure your online presence gives off the correct message.

Web Hosting – Now that you have that great domain name. It’s equally important to pick a reliable web host, who not only can get your data online, but will be there 24/7 to make sure your web site is available to all existing and potential customers. Whether sales or technical support. At BizOHost we’re available at all times. Before signing up with any company, it’s always a great idea to contact their customer service department. This will give you a great idea on the response times you can expect once signed up.

Most web hosts as does BizOHost provide some type of backup service. In our case we provide weekly backups. Whether or not your host provides a backup it is always a good idea to make a backup of your account and store it locally on your computer. If your site is static such as plain text site using no databases doing a simple backup each time you make major changes will be sufficient. However, if you have a site using technology such as MySQL databases where your stored information is frequently changing. Depending on how frequently your information is changing you may want to at least make a weekly manual backup of your own. Lets look into why it’s a good idea to make your own weekly backups.

In one example lets say your host makes backups each Sunday. On Tuesday you make major changes to your site. On Wednesday however when making additional changes you accidently delete some important files. Now your host of course may restore your account. However, as this would be from the backup on Sunday the important changes you made would not be included. As a precaution it would have been helpful to make a backup prior to initial changes on Tuesday and then another backup after you have found that your site is now stable and running smoothly.

In another example lets look at the stability of your host. BizOHost as any other reputable host that provides backups will make every attempt to ensure your backup is available when needed. However in an imperfect world there are issues that occur. We do backups on several levels so this shouldn’t ever be an issue with us. However, lets say your host only provides backups on one level. This being the same server your web site is stored on. Now lets say there is an error with that drive and the data is lost. At that point there wouldn’t be any backup of your data available and if you didn’t manually create one all information for your site would be lost. That’s a pretty extreme case, but the point we are trying to emphasize is when dealing with sensitive information you typically want to eliminate any doubt.

When using Cpanel which is the control panel we provide you will login at yourdomain/cpanel. Once logged in you will select the “Backups” link.

From there you may either download a Full Backup which would include your emails, site files, databases, etc.. in one file, or you may download a partial backup of specific information.

In most cases as with us only the host would be able to restore the Full Backup. You may however provide this file to us if needed and we will restore for no charge. For a partial backup you would be able to restore file(s) on your own.

1) Many times a customer who is not so familiar with maintaining their site will have their web designer or site admin open account in the name of the web designer or admin. Later on the actual domain owner may want to fire the admin or web designer. However, if the admin or web designer is not doing business honestly they may not hand over your account so easily or they may even attempt to do something to damage your site such as taking down your files or deleting the account all together.

2) It is very common for a web designer or admin to purchase and account in their own name and use their credit card information to pay for account as you the customer have already paid them directly. In most of these case the person will pay in advance for a year or so although this can apply to any billing cycle. Your site will run fine within that period but once it’s time for renewal you may have lost contact with the person who setup account for you. Account would then become suspended as no payment was made and you would be unable to access account as you are not listed as owner or a contact.

There are several other scenarios that could take place.

The best way to go about this is the following:

Setup account in your name and if needed when going through the order process list your web design or admin as a secondary contact. This way they may still contact us for support or sales request buy all major changes must be done by the primary contact which would be you. As primary contact should the need arise you will also always have access to remove the secondary contact.

Another thing to be aware of is account password. In most cases the web designer will only need access to upload your web site. From that point on your site would either be static or updates would be done through a Blog such as wordpress or joomla where you would be the one writing the content. In these cases after your web designer has done their job it is best to update your password so they no longer have access. If they need to do future work you may provide them the current password and once they are done once again change password to something new. If you have an admin who is constantly updating your web site I wouldn’t advise on changing on changing the password as they would obviously need access, but I do advise on two things:

1) You should always have the current password for your site and make sure it wasn’t updated to something you are not aware of.

2) You should familiarize yourself with how to update your password should the need arise.

Account security is a never ending process. Stay tuned for the next tip.

“Hi, my domains is ‘A Great Flower Shop’ and I can’t access it, please help.” Now lets look into why this is not good.

First, “A Great Flower Shop” is not a valid domain. A valid domain can only contain letters and or numbers and no special characters other then a dash symbol. A valid domain also must end with a valid TLD such as .com .net .org, etc..

agreatflowershop.com would be a valid domain name. If domain was specified as “A Great Flower Shop” this would also be the first domain we would guess as the correct domain.

However, in most cases the actual domain is something different such as a-great-flower-shop.us, agreat-flowershop-in-usa.com, good-flowersshop-buy.mobi, or domain may be completely unrelated such as bobsrosegarden.co.uk.

The more valid the information you provide. The faster we are able to assist you. It is also best to contact us from the email address on file for your account. That way your account information will automatically come up once you contact us.

We’ll take a look into a few of the many tasks on securing your site.

1) Picking a strong password

This is the most important part in my opinion of keeping your site secure. Time after time we see orders where a customer who’s name may be lets says “James Jones” will select their username as James and password as Jones. In other cases the user may try to select both their username and password as James.

Hackers or anyone trying to access your site without authorization often have lists of username / password combinations that are often used. Picking a password which falls into this category increases the threat of having your account hacked.

Cpanel has a great feature which will generate a secure password for you. However if you want to create a password on your own there are three rules you should always follow: use both upper and lower case letter, user numbers as well as special character, never user dictionary words. A good example of a strong password would be something like U3q$15Vk&!t@.

2) Check for updates on the scripts you are using

Many times a customer will hire someone to setup a site for them. They may install a message board, blog software, or other script. As you only hired them for that task in a lot of cases you have no further communication with them after setup and leave your site as is. However site scripts as with your computer operating system is often updated pretty frequently. Many of the times these aren’t just feature enhancements, but patches to vulnerabilities in the software.

Not updating your software means that your site can still be damaged by this exploit. The better scripts often have notifications on the admin control panel which will notify you when an update is available. However, you should always keep a record of the scripts you have installed and check the developers site at least once per week to see if any updates are available.

3) Keep your computer updates current and use smart practices

Security for your web site starts right at your computer. How else does your files get published to your site, your email checked, or your control panel get logged into?

If using windows you should have automatic updated turned to on or check for updates frequently. You should also have a virus program installed as well as a firewall configured at the minimum. Be sure to be careful of the software you install and make sure it’s from a trusted source. Even if you have followed steps 1 and 2, having a malicious program installed on your computer can make those steps useless.

These are only a few of the steps needed to secure you site as well as computer. As said, this is a never ending process.

“Hi,

My domain is customersdomain.com and I forgot my password. Please reset it ASAP and send login details to email@randomemailaddressnotinoursystem.com as this is urgent

Thanks
Bye”

Any decent host would of course require you to submit verification details prior to completing request. Lets look into why this was a poor ticket.

At this point only two things have been verified. The domain customer wants password reset for and the email address they want password sent to. Nothing confirming account ownership has been provided.

Most of these request do in fact turn out to be valid requests from the actual customer, but lets say that wasn’t the case. As a customer I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate your account information being turned over so easy.

A better request would have been worked something like:

“Hi,

My domain is customersdomain.com and I forgot my password. Please reset it ASAP and send login details to my primary email address on file which is email@addressinoursystem.com as this is urgent.

The last four digits of the credit card on file for my account are xxx

Thanks
customer name”

First of all we are assuming this email was sent from the address that is on file for account. With most ticket systems whenever an email is sent from your primary address automatically pulls up all your account information linking you to the domain in question.

Providing the last four digits of your credit card, paypal transaction ID or other payment information also further verifies ownership.

We don’t require this information to hassle you. This information is required to protect you and your account. The more relevant details you provide the better you allow your host to assist you.

When sending sensitive information such as even the last four digits of your credit card it is advised to do this by logging directly into our ticket system as this is secured rather then sending through email.

The thing the customers fail to realize is they actually further delay their response time with each reply they submit prior to receiving a response from staff.

The majority of web hosts use ticket systems where they have queues for different departments (sales, support, abuse, etc..). The tickets in these departments are worked on in the order received.

If there are 10 tickets in queue the oldest being from 10 minutes ago and yours (the newest) being from 1 minute ago, going in order you would be the 10th person to get a reply. Now lets says 5 minutes pass and there are now 10 tickets in queue, but 5 of the original tickets have been updated by staff. At this point you would be 5th in line to receive a reply with another 5 customers after you.

Without waiting you decide to respond to ticket and ask why you didn’t get a reply yet thinking this will expedite your response time.

In reality you just moved your ticket from number 5 back to number 10 as a customer reply will reset your ticket time making it once again the newest.

To receive the fastest response you should always include all relevant details in your initial reply and wait for staff to respond. If your situation requires immediate assistance you may set your ticket to a higher priority, include EMERGENCY in the subject line of ticket or use one of the live contact methods such as telephone, or live chat.